


How Armies Work

by L56895



Category: Final Fantasy X-2
Genre: Backstory, Crimson squad four, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:35:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26928250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L56895/pseuds/L56895
Summary: Paine knee how armies worked. Backstory for the Crimson Squad Four.
Relationships: Baralai/Gippal/Nooj/Paine, Nooj/Paine (Final Fantasy X-2)
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve added a few tags for this one, I haven’t written anything with darker themes for years, but this one is developing in that way.

Paine knew how armies worked.

At least, she understood how large bodies of men with an unachievable goal worked; growing up with warrior priests had seen to that. Those years of knowing that she was changing in a way that made life dangerous for her; that made her stand out in a place where it was safer to blend in to the grey walls. Make believe times with the other orphans that somehow transformed in to times where the men would loosen their cloaks, slip a few gil in to her palm and then slip inside her; rough hands pressing in to the back of her head as she chocked on them.

Those gil piled up, though, and they found it fun to teach her to fight until she was strong enough to use it against them. Until she was creeping on to a ferry to anywhere else, the boatman ignoring the blood that she had desperately tried to wipe from her clothes. Then, a few more gil, passed from her this time, to buy a sword and some leathers so that she never had to drop to her knees in fear again.

Yes, she knew how armies worked.

Signing up for the Crimson Squad had been a risk, she knew. As soon as she looked around the mess tent next to a boat that would take her away to another new life and saw that she was the only woman. Her heart sank in her chest, hand tightened around her sword and she approached the gangplank to be assigned her new team. She held her back straight, arms folded as the Maester in charge gruffly introduced her. Her new team: a man in Yevon clothes and a name she recognised from her time in the temples; a cocky one-eyed Al Bhed and a man who loomed over her, his cane gripped in a machina hand.

On the ship itself she was no more hopeful. Recruits piled in to the hold, boisterous and bolstered by their new camaraderie. She found an armful of blankets thrust against her chest, the briefest flash of a raised eyebrow behind spectacles before she turned and stormed out to the deck.

Still, a new life was a new life and hadn’t she always wanted to prove that she was doing her bit for Spira? A selfish child, they’d said, unwilling to put herself out there for the good of morale. Too many complaints in stuffy offices and dingy underground rooms when she should be grateful they fed her and cared for her at all. Outside on the ship, the air was cool and salty and she breathed deeply, enjoying the space around her. In the middle of the sea she was the further away from the temples she had ever been, and if she closed her eyes and ignored the bustle from below deck she could imagine she was finally, completely alone.

Not for long, though. After far too little precious quiet her solace was interrupted, footsteps approaching where she had made herself a nest amongst boxes and pallets on the deck and was furiously prodding buttons on the damned sphere recorder. Her team approaching, the priest holding a bowl of food and a steaming cup in his hands. She watched them carefully, kept her face blank and her body closed; wrapped her arms tighter around herself, hunched over on the disused pallet.

“Hey,” the blonde one threw himself down on the pallet next to her. She remembered his name suddenly, Gippal, and shifted away from him slightly. “Paine, right? Figured out that recorder yet? You need any help let me know, yeah? I don’t know if you’ve heard, but us Al Bhed know a thing or two about machina.”

He flashed her a grin and took the sphere recorder gently out of her hands. His movements were easy, casual and when she actually considered his face she realised that despite their very different demeanour they were about the same age. She envied him. He moved easily, spoke easily, existed easily. Although, he was Al Bhed, so perhaps that ease came from a lifetime of struggle. A vastly different approach than the one she had taken. How nice it must be to speak so freely to people, so trusting from the start. She shifted in her spot, watched as he adjusted mechanisms, kept half an eye on the other two.

“So why are you out here?” Beside her, the priest, Baralai, sat down carefully, “Isn’t it a little cold to be out sleeping under the stars?”

She shrugged, “It didn’t feel safe in there.”

“Not safe?” Baralai raised an eyebrow, “You’ve got a whole army and the Maester’s here to protect you! Where could be safer in Spira?”

Paine looked him straight in the eye. “Go on,” she kept her voice even, “Ask me what I know about how safe the Maesters are.”

At the edge of the ship the tallest of their group- Nooj- stood with his hand braced on the railing. He had said nothing in their entire exchange, simply regarded her with a serious gaze. As the ship bobbed in the waves, harsher since they had got out to sea but not as violent as she expected them to be closer to Bikanel, his knuckles turned white on the railing.

“She’s right,” he said suddenly. Paine realised it was the first time she had heard him speak. His voice was smooth, deep, but slightly stilted from under use. He commanded their full attention. “If you think armies breed good men then you’re deluded.”

A sombre silence fell over the group. Paine let it. No use them harbouring delusions now that they were heading off with an army of fools for whatever trials the Maesters could muster. A sadistic bunch, better to know that now than discover it five seconds before death. Beside her, Gippal shifted, slapped his knees in a determined flourish.

“Well, looks like we’re all here for the night, then,” Gippal pushed himself up, arms swinging, “Let’s go find us some blankets, Baralai”

“Wait- what?” Paine leapt to her feet with him, tried to steady herself against the ship’s movements, and tumbled back down on the pallet. Gippal and Baralai flashed her a grin.

“We’re a team now,” Baralai said simply, “Teams stick together.”

She pushed herself to her feet again, unsure. Gippal punched her gently on the arm.

“We’ll look out for you, don’t worry Paine,” he said, “Noojster over there may be right about those guys, but I’m not an army man, never have been, and I’ve got no love for Yevon. Al Bheds know that if you want to survive you gotta find your people and I see no other blondes around here so I guess that makes it you guys.”

“Besides, nothing like sleeping out under the stars,” Baralai waved as he turned and followed Gippal back towards the ladder that would take them down to the cabins. In the quiet, Paine turned to Nooj, found him facing the waves silently. She appreciated his need for solitude, wondered why he had joined the other two in finding her in the first place. But the cabin area was no place for someone who craved time alone so she supposed their small group was the next best thing. Still, with the machina limbs it would be easier for him to sleep on one of the narrow cots than the floor. Perhaps he was thinking the same thing, as he turned to face her, gestured with a finger towards another collection of boxes some way along the deck.

“If we move those boxes we create a sort of alcove and a place for me to rest,” he said quietly, more thinking aloud than directly addressing her. Then, he met her eye and propped his cane up against the edge of the ship. “If those two sleep against that wall then we’ll be sure to hear anyone passing by, but you’ll be able to come and go as you please.”

It was a solution to one problem, she was willing to admit. And if the three of them were to be trusted then it was a fine one. Alone out here... she wouldn’t have slept for listening out for someone approaching. But with teammates? Maybe. The idea was novel. She could have sent them away, she supposed, but a leap of faith could lead to a glimmer of safety she had never had before. Perhaps.

In the end she nodded, said nothing, then moved to help him push the boxes across the splintered wooden floor.


	2. Chapter 2

Paine awoke with an ache in her neck and a sharp pain in the small of her back. But she awoke peacefully, relatively rested after more hours sleep than she would have hoped for and cocooned in a nest of blankets on the wooden floor. She lay there, swaddled in the itchy fabric, for a few moments as she tried to gauge the time by the stretch of sunlight on the deck in front of her. Early, the light was too warm on the wood for a high sun. Shadows stretched across the deck in front of her, slow and languid, as a couple of gulls hopped along the ship’s railing and Paine watched them vaguely as she regained her bearings, orientated herself back in to a chubby hole on a ship headed for Bikanel.

The previous evening had worn on pleasantly enough- Gippal had kept them all entertained with his constant chatter and stories of Home as the night grew colder and their eyelids grew heavier. Baralai had been the first to retire, stretching out against the wooden wall of their alcove and pulling his coverlet up with a yawned ‘goodnight’. Gippal had followed shortly after, taking up a place a respectful distance from both herself and Baralai and thumping Nooj playfully on the shoulder as he went. Nooj, who nodded mutedly to her as he eased himself down on the makeshift bed put together by them earlier in the night. He had said very little all evening, but had seemingly accepted their presence well enough and had taken the drink Gippal had offered around. Paine could appreciate a standoffish demeanour, but it was difficult to trust, even if she saw herself mirrored in his refusal to say more than a few words at a time.

To her right, Gippal slept on. Paine could see his chest rising and falling gently if she craned her neck and ignored the shooting pain across her shoulder. She winced, reached up to rub the crook of her neck.

“It takes some getting used to, this way of life,” Nooj’s voice floated down gently. Paine sat up, pulled the blanket up to her chest and glared at him.

“I’m fine.”

Nooj made a noise in the back of his throat but said nothing, folded the sheets on his makeshift bed neatly in to a knapsack and raised an eyebrow at her. She found him infuriating, she realised, unreadable and therefore dangerous. She liked knowing what a man was thinking, even if she didn’t like what they thought. She watched him carefully, noted the perfunctory way he picked his meagre belongings in to his bag. She thought of her own possessions- a sword and a coin purse and not much else. Nothing to weigh her down if she needed to flee in the dark. Nooj didn’t seem the type to be running; he was solid, stoic and strong. Legends didn’t run. After a moment he looked at her, perhaps sending her eyes in him, and she buried herself in arranging her own blankets in to a pile on the floor.

“Breakfast is served!” Baralai broke the silence by arriving, four bowls of something grey and gruel like balanced carefully in his arms. Paine was impressed- he hadn’t struck her as the industrious type. Laying them on the boxes that Nooj had newly cleared and with his arms now empty, he bowed magnanimously to Paine and held out a hand to help her up.

“Ladies first?” she teased, accepting his hand and shocking herself with the ease of it. He was naive, sweet in a hardened way, like he knew more about the world than he would let himself admit, but she was surprised to dig deep and realise that she trusted him. Him and Gippal, who was rousing himself with the smell of food.

“Alright,” Gippsl sauntered over casually, raising a bowl to sniff at it, “What do we have here?”

“Yevon’s finest,” Baralai replied, a smile playing about his lips. Another surprise, sarcasm wasn’t usual for a Yevon priest. Paine reached out for the nearest spoon and took a precautionary mouthful of breakfast. It was grey and bland, but warm, and it filled her belly in the exact right way. It would do, and was about as good as an orphan could hope for. Beside her, Nooj reached for a bowl for himself, his arm brushing past hers as he went. She bristled, glared down in her own bowl and took a step away. When she looked back up he was watching her strangely.

“It’s no feast,” Gippal shovelled a large spoonful in to his mouth, grinning messily at them all, “But it’ll do!”

“Don’t expect anything more,” Nooj muttered gruffly between mouthfuls, throwing his bowl back down on the makeshift table when he had finished and turning to face out across the ocean. The rest of them finished their breakfast in silence, with only the dull sound of wooden utensils against the sides of the bowls as they scraped every last scrap in to their mouths. When she has finished, Paine placed her bowl carefully on top of Nooj’s and joined him at the railing, keeping a distance but watching him carefully.

“So... what’s next?”

Nooj looked down at her, turned to face the others. In the low morning light he looked tired, drawn in the face, and she wondered how many times he had stood around waiting for battles.

“You’re asking me?”

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you? This ‘way of life’? Surely you know better than any of us what we should expect.”

“Harumph!” Nooj exhaled, gripped his cane tightly and turned back to the sea. There was another stretch of silence before he turned back to them, shrugged his one good shoulder and gestured towards the port bow of the ship. “Who knows what the Maesters are thinking. Don’t assume you’ve got them figured out. Let your guard down and whatever trials they’ve got planned will kill you.”

He said nothing else, let them wallow in their silence and the implications of his words. Paine watched as Baralai in particular screwed up his face and furrowed his brow as he considered Nooj’s back furiously.

“The Maesters...”

“Cannot be trusted,” Nooj said simply as he turned. He caught Paine’s eye as he moved, met her gaze in understanding. “Whatever happens, remember that.”


	3. Chapter 3

On the sixth day of a supposedly week long journey- although it felt like they had been aimlessly skirting the coast of Bikanel for far longer- Paine awoke in the middle of the night. Jolted awake by a movement nearby, a sudden noise at the edge of her dream, her instincts pulling her eyes open and her nerves tingling. Someone had moved past their group.  
  
Beside her, Gippal and Baralai slept soundly. They had set up camp a few feet away; close enough to be with her without the claustrophobic feel of someone pressed up against her. On the other side, flung over a raised set of pallets to accommodate his need to stay off the ground, Nooj’s blankets lay dishevelled and empty.  
  
Nooj.  
  
As her eyes adjusted to the dark of the night she made out the shape of him propped up against a box of supplies. He had his arms folded across his chest, a defensive gesture she recognised even in solitude. The full moon had created a sort of pool of grey upon the deck and at his perch Nooj seemed to almost bask in it; the sheen of light on his metal limbs was disorienting, but after this many days of close proximity not as shocking as she had first found them. Like a scar that nudges the features at first but soon becomes a beautiful centrepiece on the face. When she pushed herself up from the hard floor and padded over to him he turned to watch her, face barely illuminated in the moonlight.  
  
"I woke you. I apologise."  
  
In the past few days of adjusting to this new life, this new team, she had found it easier to bond win the other two. They were open and chatty, kept her at ease and invited her in to their conversations willingly. Nooj was harder. He brooded in the corner instead of joining in with them. Ate his meals without small talk or complaints. They had teased a few opinions out of his with regards to their imminent mission, sought some advice on handling Sin spawn and the like, but she really knew little else about him that had come from his mouth. The boat was rife with gossip, though, and Paine found herself strangely intrigued. He'd single handedly taken on a horde of Sin spawn. He'd run headlong towards the beast defending a lost love. There were villages whose entire population owed their lives to him. He'd succumbed to madness at losing a comrade and let the monsters swarm. Only one thing was clear in amongst the tall tales; he had taken on Sin, losing his arm and leg and gaining status as a legend in the process.  
  
For so long she had heard stories of the bravery of men who fought against Sin. Seen the hypocrisy of the Masters who had stayed behind and lived lives of luxury while poorer people scrambled for a scrap of respect in a world that blamed them for their own misfortune.

A memory she tried to keep buried surfaced; a Maester, whose face was thankfully buried by the passage of time, counting coins and remarking that better people than her would be willing to give up more for the cause. Would wipe that sour look off their faces for the chance to be part of something greater. She had been thirteen, maybe younger, and her pile of gil was still paltry and her future still bleak in the face of the Maesters and warrior monks desire to keep her malleable. Something had been nagging her about the stories she’d heard on the boat and she realised what it was.  
  
"They talked about you in the temple where I grew up," she said suddenly, breaking the strange silence that had wrapped around them. His eyebrow lifted slightly. "After you fought Sin they talked about your sacrifice. Told me that I should be making sacrifices too. For the good of Yevon."  
  
"Yevon likes to act as if sacrifices are a choice people make rather than something forced upon them," Nooj's voice was quiet, barely audible over the sloshing of waves below the ship except for the fact that Paine had stepped close to hear. Something about his words struck her as a signal of understanding, as if he could see back in to those dark stone rooms and understand her pain. He shifted then, edged along the pallet to leave room for her and she felt no hesitation in taking a seat next to him. She resolved to sit at a respectful distance, but the air was cool and it was tempting to move closer to him for warmth. They sat in silence for some time, in something akin to comfort, until he broke it with a question.

“How old were you, when you got out of the temples?” His tone was curious, almost friendly, and she turned to meet his eye.

“I left just before my fifteenth birthday.”

“Later than most temple orphans,” he observed.

“Yes, well, it never really felt like they’d let me go.”

“And have they?”

His voice wasn’t unkind, but she felt a dark sort of rage growing in her chest. She moved to push herself up off of the pallet and felt the gentle pull of his hand on her elbow.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “That was thoughtless of me to say.”

Paine settled back on the pallet, minutely closer this time, and threw him a severe look. In the cool moonlight she struggled to make out his expression completely, failed to gauge the sincerity of the apology, the remorse in his face. She had no reason to doubt him, but he was a closed book and a Yevon critic fighting a Yevon war. That much was clear from the little he had said to them all. Was it hypocrisy? Or a result of the limited chances any of them had to escape their fate.  
  
"Why are you fighting for Yevon again?" she asked him, her voice harsher than she intended. He sat silent in response, his face set like stone. Briefly, she regretted the question. But his probing had made her uncomfortable and she wanted to shift that discomfort back on him.

In the corner, Gippal snorted and rolled over. The imposition in their fragile silence was disconcerting and she realised, with more than a little surprise, that she wanted him to answer. Wanted to know something about him that for a moment might just be hers to understand. Finally, Nooj shifted beside her and straightened on the pallet.  
  
"I know how armies work," he said simply. He watched her from behind the curtain of his hair, expression unreadable but eyes shining. “It’s... easier this way.”

Paine nodded simply, rearranged herself so that her heels were tucked up underneath her on the wood and watched him back. If he noticed that she had edged ever so slightly closer he said nothing, simply held her eye as they listened to he waves beating the hull of the ship and the gentle snores of their comrades drifting up from the floor below.


End file.
